I went to Liverpool Street yesterday evening, to meet up with some friends. Haven’t been into London for a while, and you forget quite how strange it is to see all these people looking so stressed.

It reminded me of something from Pirsig’s ZMM:

After a while Sylvia sits down on the wooden picnic bench and straightens out her legs, lifting one at a time slowly without looking up. Long silences mean gloom for her, and I comment on it. She looks up and then looks down again.

“It was all those people in the cars coming the other way,” she says. “The first one looked so sad. And then the next one looked exactly the same way, and then the next one and the next one, they were all the same.”

“They were just commuting to work.”

She perceives well but there was nothing unnatural about it. “Well, you know, work,” I repeat. “Monday morning. Half asleep. Who goes to work Monday morning with a grin?”

“It’s just that they looked so lost,” she says. “Like they were all dead. Like a funeral procession.” Then she puts both feet down and leaves them there.

This is where I say Morning and Evening Prayer most days.
I had my friend with me this morning.

Caught this on Sky last night, when I should have been getting into bed, and the first twenty minutes hooked me – really good, atmospheric, ‘is she insane or not?’ I knew nothing about the film prior to watching it – Julianne Moore is reliably excellent – so I settled in for the long haul.

Then it lost it, big time. I don’t know about you, but alien abduction just doesn’t interest me. The only thing I’ve seen which had any merit, related to this topic, was ‘Signs’.

Garbage. What on earth was Julianne Moore thinking?

Last year, the National Lottery provisioned the placing into 300 State Secondary Schools a collection of Everyman classics. Wonderful.

Most were rejected by the schools.

“For every state school that welcomed the books, several others said that they had not asked for them, had no use for or interest in them and no book storage and please would the publisher take them back forthwith.” (From a letter in the TLS, Jan 20, 2006 – which I’ve just got round to reading)

This is why it is part of the essential Christian task of this time to preserve our memory, to witness to the choices made. We look for the city that is to come, and we mourn the passing of this city that has been.

This was really very good indeed. Another one that may or may not get a second review in the future (bit like V for Vendetta), but the theme of violence is something that I dwell on a lot.

Highly recommended, if you can cope with this sort of thing.